


CS 0155 Data Witchcraft

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, archive warning: best gay pal lily page, archive warning: captain swan little bang 2k17, archive warning: implicit and consensual sexual content, archive warning: oc mama jones, archive warning: pink reefer, archive warning: plant witch killian, archive warning: retro tech, archive warning: swears, archive warning: tech witch emma, archive warning: txting ghosts, archive warning: urban plant growth, archive warning: vague mentions of childhood sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:24:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: All the books and movies seem keen on operating under the assumption that magic is supposed to make your life easier. But apparently it was all lies, because being in one’s 20s seems to suck no matter what kind of spells you’re prone to casting. Emma Swan and Killian Jones, while “blessed” with the gift of magic, are certified emotional disasters—it’s a relief to know that at least they’ve found each other. A Contemporary CS Witches AU.





	CS 0155 Data Witchcraft

**Author's Note:**

> **As you can see from the tags, this fic does contain mentions of childhood abuse. It is discussed in passing and not described in explicit detail. If you need further info. before reading, feel free to send me a message on Tumblr,[@hencethebravery](http://hencethebravery.tumblr.com).**
> 
> This was a story that I planned on finishing with about 9k. It ended up being completed about 41 words under the 15k limit, and imo it should probably be longer, but since that’s not an option, this is what we’re left with! I’d like to thank a few ppl that made this possible: @the-reason-sail-home, @pritkins-little-witch, @initiala, and @wellhellotragic for all of their time and helpful thoughts. This fic ended up being far more challenging than I had anticipated and I couldn’t have done it without y’all. Especially Tessa and Kat, you are both my shining stars. Thank you for never letting me give up on myself. Literally incredible freaking artwork that I _cannot stop staring at_ provided by [@clockadile](https://clockadile.tumblr.com/) and [@princesse-swan](http://princesse-swan.tumblr.com), both found [here](https://clockadile.tumblr.com/post/170539040600/while-hes-used-to-women-finding-this-particular) and [here](https://princesse-swan.tumblr.com/post/170541128981/cs-0155-data-witchcraft-by-hencethebravery-ao3) (respectively). If you’re interested in listening to the soundtrack I made to suit the particular vibe of this story, you can listen on 8tracks, [here](https://8tracks.com/alanabeans/cs-0155-data-witchcraft).

 “Watch carefully that magic that occurs when you give a person enough comfort to just be themselves." — Atticus, _Love Her Wild: Poems_

 ✳︎

**i. ugly_duckling**

Emma Swan learns about magic the same way that most children do—slipped in between the pages of a book. She is not granted the privilege of enjoying a conversation typical of most children; that of parents soothing the inevitable disappointment with the truth that magic is not real. The parents might, for the most part, keep the dream alive for a certain number of years. And so, for that certain number of years, the child will be allowed to live in a world where magic exists. That child will spend a few blissful years staring a little too hard at the creepy house at the end of their street; that child will throw a packet of salt over their shoulder, even at the risk of being yelled at by their parents after the fact. Most children will grow up feeling afraid, and not much can be done about it—but to be able to quell that fear, at least temporarily, with the suggestion that there’s a magical world at the heart of it all, waiting to be discovered? That kind of thinking might make the pain of all those unknown variables worth it, at least for _most_ children.

Emma Swan was not most children. She was “most children,” in the sense that she wandered into a library and plucked a book off the shelf with a flying girl on the cover (she rode a broomstick and wore a black hat). She was “most children,” in the way she jumped off picnic tables and prayed that her feet would never touch the ground. But she was not “most children,” when she brought the book home and showed her new “mother” the particular book in question.

“Oh, you silly thing,” Mrs. Swan had so gleefully informed her, a sharp smirk on her stiff, something not quite right about it face. “Hasn’t anyone told you? There’s no such thing as _magic_.”

In the Swan household there was no such thing as magic. There was a roof over Emma’s head, and a hot meal three times a day, but in all other matters of importance, it may as well have been another orphanage. To make matters worse there was Betsy Swan’s husband, Mitchell Swan—a man who, on his very best days, could hardly summon the courage to lift his ass from the couch, and on his very worst, slip into Emma’s room every other night when his wife was asleep.

As a child, Emma would disappear into her own head, creating elaborate escape attempts from her supposed home. Sometimes she would don her own pointy black hat, put a spell on her own boring broomstick, and turn Mr. Swan into some small, nasty insect she could crush beneath her shoe.

When Emma turns seven, the Swans buy their first computer. It’s a Power Macintosh G3, which matters little to Emma at the time. At first, when she overhears them talking about it, Betsy mentions something about a mouse, and she finds herself unnaturally excited at the prospect of there being an actual animal in the house. That is until she actually sees the thing, and becomes confused and disappointed at the sight of this small, oddly shaped piece of plastic attached to a length of cord. She stares curiously at the blackened screen for a few moments until Betsy returns, yelling at her to get her “behind” away from the most expensive thing in the house.

✳︎

Like most major developments that might occur within the pages of any generic fantasy novel, Emma makes her first acquaintance with the digital universe in the dead of night. Closer to midnight, if we’re being specific. A clock chimes from the dining room, and the Swan house is blessedly silent as she sneaks down the hall, past the flickering light of the television, the soft sounds of Mitchell’s snores emitting from his armchair.

The machine sits quiet and imposing atop the desk in the office; the light from the moon casting an eerie glow about the room, the dark screen a seemingly infinite void staring back into her wide, curious eyes. She sneaks a glance back towards where she came, expecting to hear Mitchell’s heavy footsteps, or Betsy’s cruel laughter, but she’s only greeted with silence, the odd creak of an old house.

When she finally works up the nerve to power it on there’s a kind of yawning, high-pitched static that hits her ears in a not entirely unpleasant way. It’s just enough that she finds herself overcome with the urge to open and close her mouth comically wide, like when your ears pop inside the cabin of an airplane and you have to re-adjust all the loose air inside your head. There’s a sound afterwards, a low hum that would never really go away. In later years, she would come to understand that there’s always a vague humming associated with most electronics. What was different in Emma’s case was the sound _beneath_ the hum, or rather, the _sounds_.

She would learn to ignore them after a time, picking and choosing the most relevant or useful voices. Sometimes they were people, other times they were… something else. The first night she boots up the Power Macintosh, it’s all white noise, and she assumes it’s a thing that everyone can hear. It’s a lot of excited whispers, so hushed and quickly spoken that she has a difficult time making out any one word or phrase.

“Hello?” she utters quietly, still silently praying for the Swans to remain asleep and unaware of her trespassing. “Is there anyone out there?”

The humming cacophony of distant voices and dissonant beeps are the only answer, as if her own voice has gotten lost in the din, and her eyes search the desktop until they land on an oddly familiar image of a piece of paper. It is unlike any other piece of paper she’s ever seen, this bold, flat image outlined in blocks of color—untouchable, and with no discernible smell or texture. She has stumbled upon a word processor, a blank document with a blinking, vertical line that waits and waits.

The moon grows a bit brighter in the wake of her excitement, but Emma is too eager to notice the way the darker corners of the room become less so; even the way in which the computer itself has begun to emit its own soft, illuminated ring of greenish light, as if the office has been submerged in water.

“Hello,” Emma writes slowly, one key at a time. With each selection of every letter beneath her fingertips sounds a satisfying clunk, and she grins as she continues, “My name is Emma Swan.”

The silence that follows in the wake of all those voices is nearly deafening, but there’s a clear answer that sounds from within the four walls of her newly christened safe haven; murky and quiet, getting comfortable from her place seated at the bottom of a pool, _“Hello, Emma Swan. It is very nice to meet you.”_

✳︎

As it turns out, there is quite a lot about the Swans’ Power Macintosh G3 that they are not privy to. The Swans, in point of fact, seem to be ignorant of a great many things occurring out in the world and even in their own home about 99% of the time. They have never heard the hum of voices coming from the computer room, nor do they seem to receive the same kind of unsettling, predictive programming that Emma can suss out from within the apparent blankness of a darkened television screen. It’s a blessing and a curse. While it’s nice to know she’s not quite so alone as she used to be—while it seems as if she’s been able to lift a veil and spot the real world underneath, there’s still the reality of the Swans always hovering in another room, at her back, or in her bed.

Betsy catches Emma on the computer late one night about a month or so after her first midnight rendezvous, and the subsequent consequences are about as bad as she assumed they would be. There’s a harsh smack to the back of the head, even harsher words, and a rough tugging of her arm towards her bedroom door, tossing her inside and slamming it shut before Emma can say a word in her own defense. She cries and seethes, the tightness at the back of her throat a painful and vicious reminder of the fact that she is little more than a prisoner.

And while Emma stewed inside her room, her small feet pacing back and forth from door to window and back again, Betsy Swan had tried and failed to turn on her new computer after it had shut off quite unexpectedly. It’s screen remained stubbornly dark, and there was Betsy, angrily and futilely attempting to turn it back on, only to give up about 20 minutes later, returning to her own bedroom, mumbling to herself about how they would have to lug the fucking thing back to the store.

It’s all a bit of a different game after that. Emma has to be more careful about how and when she visits that place she’s found behind the curtain. She’s sure to cover her tracks online, deleting files or browsing data as if she had never been. She spends the next few years doing her best to become a ghost—in both of her lives. Within the walls of her “home,” in the hallways at school, and in the cold, impersonal well of the Internet. She studies everything as carefully as she can, but does her best to leave as little an impression as possible. She excels a little too well in her typing class at school, earning her some impressive marks from a teacher, so she fumbles a few weeks later and drops down a grade.

It goes on this way for two or three years, and it’s about when she starts yearning for more that she obtains a bus pass and starts regularly visiting the library. It is during these regular visitations that she meets Lily Page, and wonderfully, her life is never the same.

✳︎

Emma is close to turning eleven when she gets a private message from a user called “spyro-huntr3ss” on a public message board. At first her instinct is to block the user—she’s been around long enough to know that people are scum wherever you go, even in this digital world where she had felt so safe at first, this place she had decided to call her own.

“I know what it is you’re trolling for,” her mysterious new contact, likely trying to get her age, number, or address had sent, followed by, “and I can help you find it.”

From what Emma has been able to discern thus far, most people using the Internet were just as oblivious as the Swans, which was disappointing. She had been hoping, in vain it would seem, that once she’d been able to locate more users that they might be able to help explain it. The humming, and the voices, and the stories in the static—the songs lost in the high-pitched chorus of a dial-up tone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Most people thought she was being metaphorical, or just plain paranoid. Message boards were a breeding ground for those folks made of cracks and dark places; lost people looking for patterns and meaning where there were none to be found.

The unsettling shiver that shrieked down the length of her spine had her head swiveling atop her thin, spindly neck as if she were some kind of anxious, wide-eyed owl; her mouth going dry at the sight of her own name staring back at her in bold, black text. To her profound relief, the library appeared to be just as empty as it had been when she walked in that morning. Not many people would brave the snow-filled streets a few days before Christmas to hang out in a public library, but then again, not many people had the Swans waiting for them at home.

Emma felt her heart beat anxiously in time with the blinking cursor inside her text box, a taunting slowness that seemed to be daring her to refuse the offer. She glimpsed at the library entrance and observed the snow falling heavily atop the empty city streets, tried to ignore the sickeningly sweet melodies of holiday cheer emanating from the head librarian’s office. The truth had been all she ever wanted, wasn’t it? From the very first moment she’d realized that she had come from nothing, that no one had wanted her, and could that be true? From the feeling of Mitchell’s hands and eyes where they shouldn’t be—wondering if all fathers were like this. From the first time she’d booted up the Power Mac, the ghostly chorus ringing in her ears, always ringing, ringing, ringing—

✳︎

Lily’s “truth” is every bit as exciting as Emma’s painfully beating heart had hoped it would be. That yes, Emma Swan, there is a world behind the world and you have been invited to be a part of it. The people who are “in charge?” Those people that have hurt you, that have convinced you that you don’t matter, that what you might want for your life doesn’t matter—those people are powerless here. But not you, Emma Swan, not _us_. We’re the powerful ones now.

It takes her some time to truly trust her new informant, “spyro-huntr3ss,” who, while forthcoming about the realities of this world, the potential for what they could do, of what was waiting for them a few years down the line, was quite tight-lipped concerning personal details of her own life. Which was understandable, if not a bit frustrating, especially since she had known Emma’s name without having asked for it.

According to her new source (Emma’s not certain “spyro-huntr3ss” will ever be a friend), there are ways to pick apart the cacophony of sound constantly washing over her in dizzying regularity. There are also, blessedly, ways to tune out the noise. “Invest in a good pair of headphones,” had been one of the first things she’d advised, and after Emma, not yet a teenager, trapped between the freedom of the web and the reign of her parents, had quite logically argued that she had no money for such things, Lily had “laughed,” a peaky mechanical noise echoing in Emma’s ears.

 ✳︎

Despite the fact that she was still technically a child and living under the Swans’ supervision, Emma had never in her life felt so independent. If not for her inconvenient need to eat and drink every once in awhile, the Swans might have forgotten she was there at all. There was of course the unfortunate recurrence of Mr. Swan; still coerced by some dark, unspoken perversions that it was his God-given right to appear by Emma’s bedside every few nights. Until Lily had learned of it, of course. It had been a secret Emma had always kept to herself, except for that first night she had run to Betsy, hoping for a savior and finding a stern hand instead. A disgusted voice of disbelief, calling Emma the sick one, the _wrong one_. “Mr. Swan would never do that you wicked little thing,” she had hissed into Emma’s small, red face. “You’re lucky I don’t send you right back to the orphanage for this disgusting _stunt_.”

And of course, Mitchell had found out, because the dutiful wife informs her stalwart husband of every single thing going on in their house, and he had made damn sure that Emma never said a word of their “visits” to anyone, especially not Mrs. Swan.

They had been messaging one another back and forth for about two years before Lily discovered her dirty little secret, and Emma was quite happy to finally be able to think of her as a friend. Even still, she had never been tempted to reveal the truth—she was embarrassed and ashamed, and she assumed that Lily would never speak to her again should she ever slip-up. Ultimately, it had been Emma’s penchant for frequently keeping extremely late hours, coupled with her recent cell phone acquisition, which she had been keeping underneath her pillow.

Emma had only recently started cursing, and found that it was one of the few things she genuinely enjoyed. It made her feel like she was older than she was, and the older she was, the closer she was to being free of this fucking place.

When she wasn’t getting lost within the dark, less than reputable corners of the Internet, Emma learned that she loved to read. Lately, she seems to have gotten into the habit of reading the same kind of story—the same kind of journey, over and over again. She’s read these stories so many times, in point of fact, that she’s begun to seek out these same patterns as they might appear in her own life. _Is this beginning?_ She might ask herself, stepping off the bus and colliding with a polite stranger. _Is this the end?_ She would nervously wonder, thinking she had heard footsteps outside the door to the computer room.

Staring at Lily’s direct yet subtle offer on the screen, she knew that this must be one of those moments; the moment where the story is about to take a turn, and no amount of deus ex machina, or praying, or wishing will ever bring back the life you had once lived.

Mitchell Swan is stunned to find an ungodly (and almost certainly illegal) amount of money in his bank accounts the next day, and he arrives home from work in an alcohol-fueled panic. Emma watches the two of them, quiet and unbothered from the darkened hallway as they titter and yell at one another like a pair of screeching birds. Her phone feels warm in her pocket, and she smiles at the thought of what’s in store—all those atrocious, _sickening_ pictures hidden away on his work computer. What _will_ the world think of you, Mr. Swan?

**ii. jkillian@aol.com**

Killian Jones often feels trapped by the city—little more than a lifeless, concrete prison; he despises nearly everything about the place. And to make matters worse, he has the misfortune to have been cursed with the burden of having too reliable a memory. It is far too easy to be able to slip back, back, back—all the way back until he’s suddenly standing in the middle of his mother’s garden. Until he can hear her voice in his head, laughing, singing, scolding. In these brief yet harrowing moments of nostalgia he can almost always hear her tears as well; her cries of pain that he had been helpless to alleviate. Logically, he knows he had been little else but a boy when she had first fallen ill, but it matters little. He feels responsible for her illness, even more so for her eventual death, alone and searching for a son that was no longer there.

✳︎

Killian and Cordelia Jones owned a farm about five hours north of the city. Mr. Jones is long gone, and Killian, while in possession of an exceptionally good memory, remembers little of the man who his mother assures him was his father. She maintained his innocence for many years, wanting her son to know that he was loved, but as he approached a certain stubborn, righteous age, she had been forced to admit that no, he was not the man that Cordelia had hoped he would be.

“But it has not a thing to do with you, my love,” she said quietly, allowing him the benefit of thinking she hadn’t noticed his tears. It was truly astonishing that she never once raised her voice to the boy, especially given his behavior in later years. It was almost always at a level tempo, calm and direct, with just a hint of an Irish brogue that her own mother had possessed, although Killian had never actually met the woman.

“She wouldn’t have put up with your nonsense for a single moment.” Shaking her head at the sight of a broken lamp, or a carton of milk left to spoil on the counter. “You are one lucky lad.”

His mother insisted that the Jones’ were a lucky family. But as an adult he would come to believe that they had never been anything other than cursed. It would always be unclear to him exactly why that was, but he assumed it had something to do with the magic. That was always the case, wasn’t it? “All magic comes with a price,” says every single fantasy novel he had ever read, every magically-inclined film he had ever seen. Their downfall, in later years, seemed to him inevitable. If his mother were still alive, he would have asked her, “Did our family make a deal with the wrong demon?”

His bitterness, however, would still take a few more years to develop. As a child, he was enthralled with the sight of the vines and the flowers crawling their way inside the house. The way his mother would reach her hands deep within the soil and a few moments later, up would sprout the stubborn seeds. Cordelia made their living with her magic, often receiving visitors from the surrounding towns looking for quick-fix solutions to their various troubles. They would often come late at night, or when he was out in the fields, trying to make things grow or flourish, or wilt, as the case may be. But when he would see them walking nervously down the drive, quietly knocking on their aged blue door, he would drop whatever it was he was working on and try to sneak a peek at their meetings.

“What do they ask you for?” he wondered one night as she tucked him into bed, his eyes wide and curious, bright with all kinds of vivid imaginings. “Love,” she answered happily, bringing the blanket up to rest beneath his chin.

“Love?” he asked with a grimace, as if he were about to become infected with a terrible disease at the mere _mention_ of the word. “And sickness,” she continued, chuckling at his obvious disapproval. “And loneliness. Or success in their businesses.”

“Can I help?” he asked sleepily, feeling the effect of the chamomile tea his mother had made him drink every evening before bed.

“One day,” she answered, kissing him on the forehead. “Soon.”

✳︎

Ten years later and he’s not so sure how she would feel about the kind of man that he’s become. What he’s been using his “gifts” for. The harshest parts of him imagine telling her that he _is_ helping them—helping them forget how terrible the world can be; the blissfulness of ignorance. And if he makes some extra money in the process? Well, then so bloody be it. He can almost imagine himself cruelly bragging of it even, taking pleasure in the heartbroken, disappointed look on her thin, pale face.

It hadn’t started this way, to be sure. Initially, the plan had been to go to the city temporarily, to make some extra money to afford the kind of medicine that would keep her alive for longer than just a few months. Of course she had been lying to his face when she had suggested it. Made him think that there was even the slightest chance that she would live another six months. Unbeknownst to him, she had apparently contracted an illness that even magic couldn’t cure (wasn’t _supposed_ to cure, according to her).

“Then what good is it?” he had yelled despairingly, trying to ignore the pitying look on her face from where she was laid up in bed; small, weak, and complacent. No, not complacent.

“Accepting,” she had sternly tried to correct him. “Magic is not meant to prolong that which should end. You know this, Killian.”

But he had been too angry, too determined to seek out a cure, and Cordelia Jones, knowing her son, knowing his stubbornness, his inability to give up, to grapple with the helplessness of being human, had suggested that if he went to the city, used his abilities to make some extra money, perhaps they would be able to afford the medicine that could save her life.

“And take the cat, would you?” she had asked on his way out the door, shakily calling after him from where she dozed. “I want to make sure she’s well-looked after.”

Chammy was a calico with poor eyesight and an even poorer temperament. Most of the time. If you gave her some extra food or a good brushing she might deign to sit with you on the couch for a bit, but most of the time she was content to sit on a ratty armchair that he had pulled in off the street, her ears and tail flicking at the stray vines or weeds when they would grow too close.

The plan had always been to return. As soon as he had stepped foot off the bus, he had felt suffocated. By the polluted air, the distracting, flickering lights, the sounds and smells of too many human beings packed into one place like sardines in a tin. With Chammy’s crate in one hand and a packed duffle in another, he had wandered angrily through the streets until he’d found the shitty apartment he had managed to rent from a property owner who lived nearer to the farm.

“It’s not much,” he had warned Killian, clearly uncomfortable with the knowledge that Mrs. Jones was wasting away at the back of the house somewhere, “but it’ll do for a time.”

“I’m certain it will,” Killian had answered with a bitter grin, “Thanks for your help.”

✳︎

Dealing in illicit substances hadn’t been the plan at first either. He had seen the kinds of services his mother provided; there wasn’t really a “modern” term for what she practiced other than “holistic medicine,” which wealthy business people in coastal cities seemed to love opening their wallets for. Unfortunately for Killian, he had never had much of a head for such things. The plants he had managed to cultivate back home, for himself and his friends, the kinds of things the local cops had busted him for on more than one occasion, those were the kinds of things he was good at. However, getting scolded by the cops back home was one thing, winding up in a city prison was quite another.

It had taken many frustrated evenings of trial and error, and even a few angry customers, before he was forced to admit to himself that the “healing” part of it was simply not where his true talents lay.

“This is good shit,” one of his recent acquaintances (the people you sell to should never really be considered anything more) had told him late one night from their perch on his fire escape, “You could make some good money with this.”

And that’s where it had all started; a steady stream of high quality product, and more than enough people willing to pay top dollar for it. He had been just about ready to afford the medicine, the whole reason he had moved to this awful city in the first place, to retrieve the cure and bring it back to his mother, when he had gotten a call from his landlord that Cordelia had passed in her sleep.

“I’m sorry for your loss, son,” he had said quietly in a grating tone of pitying condescension, “you should come back soon, collect her things. Figure out what to do with the place.”

“Yeah,” Killian had barked back, his vision going fuzzy and his throat tightening, “Thanks.”

And he had planned to return home for the burial. He knew that was what he was _supposed_ to do. He had even gone so far as to get a babysitter for Chammy, had bought a bus ticket and packed a bag. Only he had smoked a little bit too much one morning (in preparation for the nightmarish journey home) and when he returned to himself a few hours later, found that he had missed his bus by several days. There were a few voicemail messages, mostly from people back home who had watched him grow up—some of them angry and scolding, others sympathetic and patient, reminding him that legally the farm was still his, that he could take as much time as he needed.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and suddenly it had felt too hard, and he was too much of a coward. So, ten years later and here he was—still trapped in his box like every other human-shaped sardine he would often glare at on the subway. He has managed to turn the apartment into something of a home, bringing in some potted plants that he had encouraged to grow a bit above their station. It’s something of an oasis in an otherwise barren hellscape, and while it is rare for him to not feel the occasional pang of regret and longing for what his life _should_ have been, there’s still the nagging cowardice that has left him paralyzed in a life that feels unnervingly unfinished.

✳︎

If he’s awake before sunrise, odds are whatever he thinks might be at his door at such an hour is more than likely a figment of his imagination. Especially if that figment is a grumpy, petite blonde who looks suspiciously like a _Daria_ reject. Most of that blonde hair (imaginary as it is) would seem to be stuffed into an old, slouchy beanie in desperate need of stitching, but a few stray hairs have escaped to fall across her charmingly furrowed brow.

“Well, I must say this _is_ a surprise,” managing to speak despite the dry mouth and still being half-asleep. “What do you say we continue this meeting at a more reasonable hour? Or preferably never? Never also works well for me.”

Normally he might not be so inclined to such rudeness, but a figment is a figment, and he needs his eight hours if he’s going to be remotely personable throughout the day. And drug dealers are famously nothing without their personalities.

One of the admittedly lovely, yet sadly fictional, woman’s eyebrows shoots quite delicately upwards, and he makes note of her especially twitchy fingers moving restlessly against her folded elbow. “Are you always this rude to potential customers?”

“Only when they interrupt my beauty sleep, darling, now if you’ll excuse me—”

He goes to close the door, only he’s found it blocked by a smallish, military-booted foot stuck between it and the frame, the ends of said boot all soft and scuffed; an experienced leather shoe on a tiny blonde female with impeccably groomed eyebrows. He should probably start laying off the more experimental strains. This was an unusually vivid hallucination.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very pretty,” she says hurriedly, her own tired eyes trying desperately to meet his, “but I haven’t slept in about three days, so, could you maybe help me out?”

“I’m not in the habit of selling to imaginary wom—ow! Bloody hell, what on earth was that for?”

Her fingernails are painted a formidable shade of black, which was an odd detail to have stuck in one’s mind when they’re in the midst of pinching your chest hair unexpectedly viciously. Her eyes were also a little less tired, a lot more manic, and a particularly vivid and enticing shade of green. It made him think of something—a specific memory, locked away somewhere at the back of his mind where it was supposed to _stay_.

“I can assure you, I am _very_ real,” she says on a grin, her hand still twisted up in his flannel. “And like I said, I am also _very_ tired. So, please?”

It was the sudden, gentle note of desperation in her voice, paired with the residual nipple pain at the very least, that had his circuits re-firing a little bit better than they had earlier. A familiar kind of exhaustion, an intriguing feeling of despair that he had often felt stirring painfully within his own heart. It was the fact that, while he had only known this woman to be real for a few seconds, he knew that the gentility of her voice, the sudden nervousness—that these were hard things for the slight girl with the pale hands and heavy boots.

“My apologies. Please,” smiling and opening the door wider to allow her entrance, he gestures a hand inwards as she walks into the living room. Staring at the stiff slowness of her movements, the way she filled the space around her—that was when he had suddenly remembered. The sight of the farm in the heat of late summer and the dramatic, end-of-day light that would cast the garden in a fiery glow. The smell of the dirt under his bare feet, the warm flesh of ripening tomatoes. And was that his mother’s voice, calling his name from the porch?

“What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” she answered, no doubt distracted by the unusually green and “lively” look of the place. Not to mention Chammy’s guttural chirps at her feet. “It’s Emma,” she said, extending a thin, still hand. “Emma Swan.”

“Emma Swan,” hoping his grin was a little less frenzied than it felt, “Killian Jones.”

**iii. vwthi3f**

From the outside looking in, most people would probably suspect that the soul-crushing heartbreak, betrayal, and subsequent imprisonment would have left Emma Swan yearning for the so-called “carefree days” of her youth—but those people would be wrong. It would be safe to assume that those same people had probably lived fairly standard, mediocre lives, and there’s nothing wrong with having lived such a life. Mundane lives such as these, they’re usually of the pain-free variety. Aside from the occasional missed birthday, disappointing grade, or sneaking liquor from the cabinet before they’re able, childhood tends to pass quickly and blissfully. It’s one of those things that adults often recall with fondness; they imagine that if they could go back in time to an age before bills, home ownership, and a number of regretful sexual encounters, that they might be truly happy again. Emma Swan had _dreamed_ of the mundane life even _before_ she had started living with the Swans, and certainly afterwards she had desired it moreso. She wished that her pain (and even now, the labeling of her past as “pain,” felt pitiful and tiresome) was the kind of story you didn’t mind sharing, instead of the harsh, ugly thing that she preferred most people not know. Even if they were your friends.

From her prison cell, she often tries to make a list in her head of all the good things that have happened since leaving the Swans. Those times when she’s feeling a bit lonelier than usual, or after she’s spent a little too much time thinking about his smile. As if breaking one’s heart was the worst thing that could happen to a person. And sure, prison is pretty miserable, but it’s not a foster home, and it’s not the Swans. Prison has designated computer time, and there’s no sneaking down darkened hallways at night. And the prison system, unsurprisingly, knows very little of magic, which is how she so easily bypasses the archaic security software, reaches out across the void, and finds the comforting, if not vaguely biting, words of an old friend.

At the very least, she is gracious enough to avoid coming right out and saying “I told you so.”

✳︎

One of the first things she notices about Lily Page (and isn’t that just irony at its finest) is her hair. It’s long, dark, pin straight, and some of the thickest she’s ever seen. She always threatens to chop most of it off, but never does (and never will), despite Emma’s playful needling. Unsurprisingly pale, with deep red lips and black, wet eyes that always make it appear as if she’s on the verge of tears. “Ask me if I’m ‘okay,’ one more _fucking_ time, Swan,” she would frequently threaten before fleeing the room. She would eventually, and begrudgingly, admit that being on the receiving end of someone else’s “concern” made her feel slightly nauseous, which Emma had found to be pleasantly relatable.

Lily had been living in a very small studio at the tip-top of a tall, post-war building in the financial district. It was a charming place to live, but not particularly well-suited to housing two people, so they found another. As Emma had already been led to believe, money wasn’t much of a concern when most of it was digital these days anyway, and while they couldn’t go for something especially lavish (so as not to draw too much attention to themselves), it was still a nicer home than Emma could have ever imagined as a child.

The feeling of safety and comfort in her own home is one of the good things on her list. If nothing else, one of the very best. Having the security of a door with a lock on it—a roommate who always knocks. The first night in their new place she has the best night of sleep she’s ever had, and when she woke up in the early afternoon the following day, her blankets unmoved from the night before, her door still blessedly shut, she had to muffle her relieved sobs with the absurdly soft pillow beneath her head, lest she force Lily into an awkward moment of interpersonal comfort she often found distasteful.

“I’m better online,” she had humbly conceded after an awkward, consolatory pat on the back. But it was okay. She was still the best friend that Emma had ever known, and besides, she wasn’t great with people either.

✳︎

Their apartment was a veritable hive of high-end, up-to-date tech. The walls practically hummed with it all, the various cords trailing in and out between rooms, framing windows and doorways. Another thing to add to the list; the small touches that made it both a home and impenetrable fortress from which they might change the world if they had a mind to. She’s got the friend, never really had one of those before, but on top of that, she gets a teacher—she gets power. A lot of it. She also gets an iBook G4 with 1.5 GB of memory (that she manages, with some magical prowess, to enlarge to around 3 or 4). She loves that it fits in her lap, that she can feel the warmth of it against the tops of her thighs when she hasn’t powered it down for 48 hours. The sounds of the keys beneath her fingertips, loud and decisive, wary of her at first, but after a few weeks, craving her touch.

“We all have different strengths and weaknesses,” Lily had explained over coffee, twirling the length of headphone cord round and round her finger. “You seem to be especially adept at Research.”

Emma huffs. “Couldn’t anyone be good at that?”

“Not when it involves talking to corpses and seeing the future.”

“I don’t think they liked to be called that,” Emma had said uncomfortably, turning the sound down on the phone in her pocket. “Well,” Lily answered smartly, forcing down her cold coffee with a grimace, “that’s why I’m not so good at it, isn’t it?”

Emma eventually learns that when Lily says “Research,” it doesn’t necessarily mean traditional forms of information gathering. She could hop on Google and find an article, probably quicker than most, sure, but what Lily _really_ means is communication and knowledge; she means dipping her fingers into the void and coming back with Truth. Apparently there’s a whole freaking dictionary of witch-related vocabulary that she’s missed out on, and funnily enough, it’s not online.

“Where anyone could find it?” Lily explained, dropping the aged, poorly bound manuscript onto Emma’s lap, “Analog has its uses.” Knowledge is good. Answers are good. The world is vast and old and it’s all in one place, just waiting for her to hit the power button.

✳︎

It sounds stupid, but she could eat ice cream whenever she wanted. It’s one of the good things, and as Lily had informed her, it’s also one of those things that kind of made her just like everyone else. “Most people enjoy the privilege of being able to eat ice cream whenever they want,” she said, distracted with something or other on the screen in front of her, “congratulations, you’re finally normal.”

There was a note of sarcasm in her tone (surprise, surprise), but  Emma couldn’t suppress the grin that had appeared on her face at the thought of being just like everyone else. If one were to totally ignore the “tech-savvy witch,” thing, obviously. Eating ice cream, “just like everyone else,” while a good thing at first, would ultimately return to bite her quite firmly on the ass, but for a while it had been Rum Raisin and Moose Tracks whenever the hell she wanted. Mercifully, it was sold cheap at the corner bodega and sometimes she would wander out of the apartment mere hours before the sun was due to rise and buy herself one or two pints (even though there were several unfinished sitting in the freezer). She met Neal Cassidy during yet another trip to the store in order to indulge in one or two flavors she hasn’t had the pleasure of trying yet. Like Cherry Garcia or the one with the caramel-filled chocolates shaped like fish. Lily had referred to the fish-shaped chocolate as a “crime against nature,” but she could be a tad dramatic sometimes.

“Gotta cure those night-bites somehow, I guess, right?”

Emma Swan dislikes and distrusts men as a general rule. So when she heard a distinctly male voice at her back, had sensed the way he stood over her, she had felt uncomfortable almost immediately. Her phone started to buzz quite incessantly in her pocket, despite the fact that she had left Lily sleeping and no one else had her number—she had, mistakenly, ignored it.

Emma had never entertained the prospect of a romantic relationship before Neal. At that point in her life she’d been getting closer to 18, so she knew it was about “that time,” but it had never really been something she wanted to pursue. She had only just started getting used to the feeling of Lily sitting next to her on the couch; the non-threatening way she might bump their hips together when she moved past her in order to get to the fridge. And it’s not like he managed to get under her skin quickly (if anything she remembers noting that he had quite the punchable face), but there was _something_ about him she had found charming, and unfortunately she was not _quite_ as repulsed as she might have expected herself to feel.

“What?” she had asked with some confusion, hoping her facial expression was not quite so dumb as she imagined it to be.

“Late night cravings,” he clarified, nodding at the ice cream in her hand, “I know the feeling.”

She managed to surmise he was talking about being _high_ , not that she would have really known. But she nodded anyway, finding herself in the familiar predicament of having to pretend she’s “in on the joke,” so to speak. She had never done any kind of drug at that point, but she had preferred he assume she knew what he was talking about and let her off the hook, rather than come off as some kind of dense pre-teen. Luckily for her it had worked, and he simply smiled and walked off, snagging a candy bar and shoving it into his pocket as he went. Despite the obviousness of the lift the clerk had failed to notice, and Emma rolled her eyes, finally pulling the buzzing phone out of her pocket.

 _Idiot_ , read a text from an unknown number, the less frenzied hum of a few dozen voices scrolling in the darkness of her closed eyes, infinite, vertical rows of ones and zeroes. _That’s a walking prison sentence if we’ve ever seen one._

✳︎

Emma stares up at the ceiling of her bleak, unremarkable prison cell and thinks about how she might yell at those numbers now, if she could. Thinking they’re so smart all the time just because they’re dead. Or, ya know, “untethered by their human forms,” or whatever the fuck. In yet another teachable moment, Lily had tried to explain that while most of the time she was in conversation with the dead, sometimes she was just reaching out to other Techies wandering around in the same playground as her.

“You shouldn’t trust everything they say,” Lily had warned, “I know it seems like they know everything because they’re ‘one with the machine,’” her eyes rolling, “but most of them are just as lost and fucked up as we are. There’s no power greater than your own instinct.”

It’s too bad Emma never really got around to the whole “trusting herself” thing. Especially when it came to Neal Cassidy—the first boy to make her feel special. The asshole who had given her a taste of what it meant to love and be loved only to rip the still beating heart out of her chest and squish the particularly sensitive parts between his toes. Not that she had known that at the time. At the time she had simply been relieved to know that she wasn’t completely broken. That someone could care for her, that she could care for them in return. That she could bear the feeling of his hand wrapped around hers (ignoring the fact that she was often bothered by the unusual sweatiness of his palms).

When she’s not walking in circles around the prison yard or in the computer lab, she’s replaying her memories of the last year as if they were disassociated segments of a silent film—a distorted, desaturated mess of key scenes that would ultimately lead her to this very moment, to this hard bed beneath her back. That’s usually when the bad begins, when she goes back to adding good things to the list.

The dead ones always want to know because they’ve forgotten, and they’re hoping that she’ll be able to help them remember what it was like, being alive. _Please, Emma Swan, please bore us with the details._

It’s not quite so bad at first. They flirt a lot, which Emma finds fun despite never having really done it before, and then there’s her first kiss, and the first time having sex she actually _enjoys_ , and running through the darkened city streets without a care in the world. There’s sharing her story with someone who seemed to care, a lover and not a friend; who upon learning of her abilities got a gleam in his eye that she would live to regret ignoring. There was getting high for the first time and trying not to feel hurt when he had laughed at her obvious inexperience, despite having promised that he wasn’t going to. It was stupid to ignore the hint of warning in Lily’s eyes when she started spending more nights at Neal’s place. Not to mention the dozens of ominous text messages from unknown numbers.

Emma had become defensive and snarky almost immediately. Taking offense at the suggestion that she couldn’t handle herself in her first _grown-up_ relationship, as if she wasn’t a smart, experienced woman with a good head on her shoulders.

As it turned out, the “babysitter” probably would have been helpful. Maybe the babysitter would have been able to stop her from transferring all of those large, _traceable_ funds into Neal’s accounts. When she has a difficult time conjuring up another good thing to add to the list, his smarmy voice pops into her head instead, reassuring her that “no one would ever find out.”

✳︎

Three years and one prison sentence later she often finds herself haunted by her own words. Disgusted with herself for betraying the one person who had never been anything other than kind in a world full of monsters. “All’s well that ends well,” Lily had said in greeting upon picking her up from prison, her face hidden beneath the shadow of a baseball cap. “Breathe in that sweet, sweet freedom.”

The only _useful_ thing that Neal had managed to leave in his wake, aside from a renewed sense of disgust with humanity as a whole, was the innocuous drug habit. She didn’t consider herself to be an addict by any means, not that an actual addict would admit to such a thing, but she certainly imbibed more frequently than she might have predicted a few years earlier. The problem (if you had to call it that) was using it for normal human things that most people were able to accomplish without the chemical assist—things like sleeping.

Emma has always had trouble sleeping. It was unsurprising given her history, but as it turns out, staring at screens almost 24 hours a day doesn’t really help the situation either. She had tried a handful of other remedies over the years: a hot cup of chamomile tea before bed (that always made her have to pee right on the edge of sleep); some user generated playlists comprised of soothing instrumentals (except for that one “experimental” song at the end that left her heart racing); charge and cast spells left waiting in her camera roll, various hand drawn sigils or long strings of emojis (while effective, often accompanied by odd dreams). For whatever reason, the weed had been the most helpful. She had felt ashamed at first; good little girls don’t use drugs after all (sounding suspiciously like Mrs. Swan in her head), but it was like Lily always said, “If it works, it works.”

**4: urbanfarm3r@gmail.com**

While their first meeting had undeniably fallen on the rougher end of the friendship spectrum, there’s something about her that insists upon a second. Especially after he’s had more sleep, and his charm is significantly more effective. He’s held her hand for an almost inappropriately long few moments before he comes to his senses and asks after her problem—what is it she’s in the market for? It’s as she’s said, “trouble sleeping,” and he reminds her that his product, while almost exclusively well-received is a bit, shall we say, “stronger” than the usual fare.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, glancing suspiciously around his oddly _lush_ studio despite it being midwinter.

“My methods can be a bit,” pausing for effect, a bit of vague handwaving for emphasis, “unusual.”

“‘Unusual,’ like _laced_ , unusual?”

“Good heavens woman, no,” he says hurriedly at the angry look on her face, frustrated with his seeming inability to form sentences this morning. “Let me show you.”

Normally, he might not be so inclined to reveal his “gifts” to a new client, but as he surmised from their awkward yet brief conversation at his door, there was just… _something_ about her. And for whatever reason, he got the sense that she wasn’t about to be shocked or frightened by his admission. He leads her over to a large, round window that looks out over a dismal alleyway. The tops of other apartment buildings with decrepit looking antenna rest precariously on their respective roofs. The glass of the window is warped, evidence of the building’s rather respectable age; dotted with air bubbles and flecked with dirt and pollen. The window itself, while framed by some aesthetically pleasing distressed brick, is also encircled by a rather impressive wreath of thick, green vines.

Beneath the window he’s setup his appropriately named “Alchemist’s Table,” complete with ceramic pots and glass test tubes, even an old microscope he had acquired at a middle school auction. “You some kind of mad scientist?” Her words sound a bit sharp, but they’re nowhere near harsh enough to hide the curiosity and wonder in her voice, and he plays along with a bit of a “mad” grin.

“After a fashion.”

He shows off a bit after that, there’s no denying it, sticking a finger into a pot of soil with a small sprout peeking out of the dirt. A young and fragile thing. Emma watches, entranced, as it begins to grow and stretch itself into being, and after a few seconds, a small, pale green strawberry appears. “It’ll be ripe enough to eat in a few hours,” he says casually, reining in his laughter at the look of shock on her face, “if you’d like to stay for a bit.”

While he’s used to women finding this particular trick _alluring_ , he finds himself quite surprised at what she _ends up_ saying instead. “You’re one of _us_.”

“Sorry, love, one of who?”

“Us!” she says happily, her hands clapping gently together, “I’ve never met a non-Techie before.”

“A non-what?”

“Do you not know?” she asks, suddenly sobering, her head tilted endearingly to one side. At the blank look on his face she smiles softly, her earlier fidgeting having evaporated at the prospect of revealing this apparent truth. She leans close enough that he can smell the sweetened coffee on her breath, and an oddly familiar floral scent that seems to stem from the blonde tips of her hair.

“You’re not the only one,” she divulges in an excited whisper, and he becomes abruptly alarmed at the likelihood of falling in love with this strange woman who ended up being _undeniably_ real. “There’s _more_.”

✳︎

The smoke tastes sweet on his lips. She’s not sure if it’s magic or something else. Something unique to whoever or _whatever_ he is. They kiss on the first day they meet and she’s not quite sure what that says about her. She’s fairly certain that it says more about him—that perhaps there is something a bit irresistible about a man who has briefly wondered whether or not you truly exist. Which is ironic, because for the first half of her life it was all she could do to make sure that people knew she was there, but that was mostly so someone would feed her or give her a place to sleep. It was only after she had stopped feeling so hungry that she had hoped she would disappear.

“I have a question,” she starts, taking a hit off of his “free sample” while trying not to marvel at the trail of pinkish smoke that escapes from in between her lips. “If you were so sure that I wasn’t real, why did you even talk to me?”

When he exhales the smoke is blue rather than pink, and when it meets the colorful cloud above their heads it blends together in shades of vibrant purple. She can’t help feeling like she has stumbled into a scene from _Alice in Wonderland_ , having found herself in a strange land with an excitable man (who likes to leave empty mugs scattered about his home), as well as the literal toadstools and the rather odd sensation akin to falling down a rabbit hole.

“Rather pretty for a figment, I suppose. Wouldn’t do to ignore such a lovely, imaginary thing,” crushing the the last of the joint against a small, porcelain plate, “might hurt her feelings.”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she almost ignores it. But it was hard to forget about the nightmare that had ensued when she had ignored it the last time, and she pulls it from her pocket with a polite “give me a minute,” gesture.

She snorts at the sight of the word “airs,” her mind conjuring a 16th century French courtesan in a dramatically large dress, and silently warns her heart not to get it’s hopes up. _Me too._ When she looks up from her phone his head whips away too quickly for him to have been doing anything other than staring at her, and she wills the inevitable blush from her cheeks.

“We should exchange numbers,” she says suddenly, “for when I need more.”

Thankfully he ignores her rather abrupt request and pulls a most _surprising_ device from his pocket that has her temporarily forgetting the way he had been so obviously observing her earlier. It’s a Motorola Razr V3 (launched in _2004_ ), and the only thing funnier than the phone itself is the offended look on his face after she bursts into loud, obnoxious laughter at the sight of it.

“I’m doing my best not to feel quite so hurt right now, Swan.”

“I’m sorry,” she gasps in between her embarrassing bout of giggling, “I just didn’t think you could even get your hands on one of those things anymore.”

“It may not be your ‘high-tech’ nonsense,” he goes on proudly, “but she’ll do in a pinch.”

“Oh, Killian,” she says sweetly, “I’m _sure_ she will.”

✳︎

They start texting with a frequency far more reminiscent of an honest to goodness friendship rather than that of a business relationship, and Emma finds herself having to reassure the small, frightened girl inside of her that the whole thing won’t end in disaster. _He’s not Neal_ , she thinks desperately, trying to trust in the hopeful parts of herself without succumbing to the bitter voice inside her head that struggles to forget the less admirable parts of humanity. _What’s another potential stint in prison for such a pretty face, after all?_

The first night she tries what he recommended, a strain he refers to as “Sailor’s Delight,” she dreams of the ocean. It’s an especially vivid dream, unlike anything she’s ever experienced—she can smell the sourness of low tide; taste the salt on her lips, and feel the warmth of the sun on her face. First thing in the morning she reaches for the phone beneath her pillow, her fingers flying across the screen.

She hesitates briefly before sending that last text. While it’s true her mind feels calm and her body re-energized, her heart hammers wildly inside her chest—the tiny fists of an anxious child warning her of the inevitable. While her own nervousness is enough to give her pause, she does try and take comfort in the fact that her “ghostlier” comrades would seem to have taken a backseat for the moment.

His texts often arrive in the form of mini paragraphs. Full sentences and words bundled together and sent to her as if they were handwritten letters. She can see his fingerprint on each and every one, a dirt-stained brand that conjures some unknown, vast greenery made of hills and fir trees, winding back roads and cloudless skies.

✳︎

“He better not track any dirt in here,” Lily warns her the evening before he was supposed to be coming by to drop off another batch. It was to be his first visit to their apartment, and Emma could not be more nervous if she tried. She’s been back to his place a few times since that first visit, but allowing him to come here had been an unexpected offer on her part. _Not that it matters_ , she thinks calmly, _what do you care what he thinks?_

“Don’t be such a snob, Lil.”

Lily’s mouth is full of frosted flakes as she leans against the refrigerator, glaring at the back of Emma’s head. “This shit’s expensive, and I don’t have time to fix anything he manages to break.” She suspects a note of jealousy in Lily’s ire, so she decides to cut her some slack, pressing a kiss to her cheek with a guaranteed dirt-free visit.

“It’ll be fine,” she says, heading towards her room to straighten up for no other reason than the fact that it _has_ been a while. “Besides, aren’t you curious?”

A playful shout at her back, “Not nearly as curious as you, my little thief!”

The next morning he’s standing at her door holding a potted plant. “It’s a succulent,” he says happily, his hair sticking up in all directions. He smells like the city after it’s been sanitized by a particularly cold frost, and she wonders how he’s managed to keep warm in a half-buttoned flannel and a knitted scarf. “Notoriously hard to kill,” he assures her, shoving the thing into her hands, “I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

The brief facade of confidence he had displayed while foisting the plant upon her departs rather suddenly at the sight of her apartment, and he looks all kinds of adorable and confused at the otherworldliness of it all. She supposed it _would_ look rather intimidating to a person like him, surrounded by all those green things. Not that the wires and the screens were any less alive—they were just better at playing dead.

He _does_ have some dirt on his fingertips and beneath his nails, but Emma finds herself quietly charmed by the sight of it; the deep impression of his prints highlighted by the dark soil permanently staining his skin. It’s been getting harder and harder to pass off their brief moment of intimacy as a one time thing. Especially when she can’t seem to stop thinking about it. Especially when she does stupid things like noticing his hands and trying not to recall the pleasant sensation of their roughness against her cheek.

“Don’t worry,” Emma says teasingly at the awed look on his face, “this is the most secure room in the city.” With a few magical fortifications no one and certainly no obscure, supernatural _thing_ was getting past the barriers they had implemented when they had first moved in, and it had only gotten stronger over the years.

Lily pops her head in from the kitchen, most likely with the intention of embarrassing her _only friend_. “Hey, Sprout,” she says, glaring at Killian from behind her thick curtain of hair, “don’t touch any of my stuff.”

“Don’t worry about her,” and Emma takes a moment to stick out her tongue in Lily’s direction. “She’s trapped in a state of perpetual grouchiness.”

“I heard that.”

✳︎

There’s something incredibly momentous about the occasion of his entering her room. Lily had only hung out in there a few times, and Neal had never even been inside (she had spent all their nights together at his place). It’s her favorite time of day, which helps. Late afternoon, which often brings a light that seems warmer than at any other time—and with those big windows, the ones she suspects Lily had a hand in ensuring were a fixture of the apartment, the light falls and frames the room in a buttery yellow that makes winter feel that much further away.

In a probable attempt to diffuse the tension of Lily’s condescending nickname (and subsequent scolding), he laughs and runs a hand through his hair, making it bigger than it already was.

“Well, she’s charming.”

“She’s a good friend,” Emma says quickly, irritated with her sudden urge to leap to Lily’s defense as if he had said something wrong. Which he _hadn’t_.

“I’m sure she is, Swan,” he reassures softly, “it was only a joke.”

Then comes the urge to apologize, which she knows she has no reason to, and fuck, there is no reason why this should be so _hard_ . He takes a seat in a large armchair she’s tucked away into a corner of the room, his eyes making quick work of all the unfamiliar equipment. The curious awe with which he observes her space gives her pause—takes her back to the day when she had first seen the Swans’ new computer in the room at the end of the hall. Forbidden, yet waiting for _her_ all along.

“Make sure you keep her in the light.”

“Who?” Confused by the pronoun and wondering if he’s been seeing imaginary women again. “The plant,” he explains, gesturing towards the small, green twig in her hands, “make sure she gets a decent amount of sunlight.”

A part of her wants to remind him that she’s shut up in the dark most of the time. That was why she needed the drugs in the first place. Aside from the few short hours pre-sunset when she would, occasionally, open the curtains. But he looks so _hopeful_ , she doesn’t really have the heart to deny him. “Sure. Sunlight.”

In the days following Killian’s visit to the apartment, all of the various cords and sundry start _growing_ towards the sunlight as if they were starving for it. She even starts to notice some small weeds pushing their way through her keyboard. It doesn’t seem to be a problem at Lily’s end of the apartment; her equipment seems to have stayed blessedly put, but Emma’s room is another matter entirely. She even goes so far as to make a post on a message board where other witches have been known to frequent, despite the fact that they usually have terrible advice and she’s generally better off not having spoken to them in the first place.

She attaches a picture and hopes for the best, but unfortunately no one seems to have a clue. Someone does suggest watering them and seeing what happens, but that seems incredibly stupid, so she deletes the post and moves on. Or she tries to at any rate—pretends that there is nothing at all odd about her frequent compulsions to text him anytime a meaningless thought enters her head. The way she starts opening her curtains for a few more hours each day; the feeling of the sun on her skin becoming a welcome part of her routine, as opposed to a cruel reminder of the world that exists beyond the walls of her bedroom.

✳︎

Their odd, somewhat unlikely friendship grows and flourishes like one of Killian’s plants. It is not without the occasional thorn or weed, like most relationships. The both of them are not without their mutual baggage that stings when you poke at it. Neither one of them can help messing with the other’s wounds, it would seem. Emma had always been under the impression that picking at the thing made it worse, but Killian insists on acting as an infuriating salve that alleviates the pain and leaves the injured place stronger than it had been before.

Beyond the niceties of being one’s drug dealer, getting to know another person can be quite difficult, which had been expected. From the very first, Emma had betrayed an innate desire to keep parts of herself hidden from others. Her passion for witchcraft—the excitement with which she had explained her kind to him that first meeting, it was a good trick, but it wasn’t long before he would come to realize that Emma Swan would rather place a curse upon herself than share the sordid details of her past with anyone.

It had been in the aftermath of his own unburdening—his sudden desire to finally reveal to her all of the messy details of his own life. About his mother, her passing, how maybe he was living a life she had not wanted for him. Emma had been nothing but understanding in the face of his admission, just as she suspected, their unexpected kinship made his pain an easy pill for her to swallow, but that didn’t mean she was necessarily ready to reciprocate.

“I barely tell Lily things about my past,” she had shouted angrily, her arms folded defensively in front of her chest, “why the fuck would I tell my drug dealer?”

“Oh, is that all?” Spoken into the sudden, sucking quiet of his apartment, forcing himself to ignore the painful look of regret on her face. She could wish away her words all she liked, he refuses to be anyone’s whipping boy, no matter how _damaged_ they are. “Then you’ve gotten what you came for,” he said, patiently opening his front door for her convenient departure, “and you let me know should you require my services again.”

Her facial expression could not have been more pained—a fervent desire to take back what she had said, to offer an apology and admit to him the facts of the case. The fact that he had, quite unexpectedly, become one of the more important people in her life. The fact that she often daydreamed about the hour or so in which they had forgone the illusion of platonic friendship. The fact that she often considered the Killian-shaped hole in her future where he would almost undoubtedly be. But, alas, stubbornness won out, and she stormed away, so swiftly and in such a rage with herself that she left her jacket behind. A weathered, burgundy leather number, soft to the touch and smelling vaguely like an electrical fire. At least she’d have an excuse to see him again.

✳︎

He waits a few days. Keeps his phone buried in a drawer beneath all of his socks and underwear, resisting the urge to send her a text, to wonder if she had sent him one. Eventually, he returns the jacket with a proposition. “Come with me,” he says, not quite begging, but with a breathlessness that he does find mildly humiliating. “Please.”

They take a bus upstate, far enough away from the farm that he doesn’t feel claustrophobic, but with enough distance between themselves and the city that he feels like he can finally breathe. They wander through small, sleepy towns full of charming coffee shops and bookstores, grabbing a cheap breakfast before venturing further into the countryside, stumbling through various trails and parks suggested to them by the locals. “There’s a particularly nice spot,” remarked the older woman who had served them coffee, “right here.” Marking up the paper map that Killian had insisted they buy.

It is a bit nippy further north, and despite the fresh smell of earth and rain, their noses still turn pink as they walk through the woods. The “nice spot” in question is a ledge of rock that overlooks a large, clear lake that sparkles in the sun. A light mist hovers over the top, and when he takes a quick peek to gauge Emma’s reaction, he is momentarily stunned at the way the sunlight has fallen across her face—how it has betrayed the sheen of wetness that seems to be gathering at the corners of her eyes.

“Swan?”

“It’s not a nice story,” she begins after a few moments of quiet. “I don’t like to tell people. Because it’s just not…” She huffs in frustration, turning away briefly to face the sun, staring out over the water as if it will be able to finish this conversation for her. “I don’t want people treating me differently.”

He hesitates before gently pulling some stray hairs from her chapped lips, and when she looks back at him it feels as if he’s been punched in the gut. Having never seen this particular look on her face before; perhaps moments away from arriving at this emotional plateau, only to shutter it away at the last moment. It is glassy eyed and fragile, her nose wrinkling and her hands fidgeting with the ends of her sleeves—it is a choked admission of all the horror she has known; of her adoptive family, her villainous “father,” the computer at the end of the hall, the young girl waiting at the other end who had stormed the tower and rescued her from a cruel fate.

When the tale is finally done, and he pulls her into his arms, the sun has moved higher into the sky. The fog has evaporated completely from the surface of the water, and now it merely shimmers. Their legs dangle over the rockface, and he presses a firm kiss against the side of her head. “I swear,” he whispers against the shell of her ear, “you are still the same person you were before. And if it seems as if I look at you differently—” He considers his words carefully, her fingers tapping nervously against his upturned palm, “It’s because I am more in awe of you then I was before.”

Her kiss is a salty, stinging thing against his tongue, and he can still feel the occasional soft hiccup resonating from the back of her throat. “I’m tired,” she admits quietly, her head rolling against his shoulder.

“Aye, love,” giving her another squeeze, a brief kiss to her cheek that reddens under his lips. “Let’s go home.”

✳︎

It’s the fact that he never actually asks that makes her want to do it. That and the fact that he _has_ bared his soul to her on multiple occasions and asked for so little in return. And quite honestly, there’s not much left he could do to her, given the fact that she’s spilled her damage all over him anyway.

Their feet hang over the fire escape out Emma’s window, the chilly spring air keeping it brisk yet refreshing. A hint of warmth that reminds the world of the impending season. “If you could,” she begins gently, taking a sip of their shared beer, “would you want to talk to her?”

He nibbles at his lower lip in response, an infuriating and distracting movement that has her discreetly pinching the top of her own hand. “I’m not sure,” he admits quietly, looking a bit like someone who feels ashamed by who they have become. Although, if she had the strength, she would have stopped him in that moment, reminded him that there was _nothing_ to be ashamed of. That he was every bit the sweet, loving man his mother had suspected he would become. “Not sure she’d very much want to speak with _me_ , if I’m being honest.”

Her heart breaks at the sound of his nervous, self-deprecating laughter, but she keeps her earlier, _enamored_ thoughts to herself. While he’s lighting a cigarette she pops back into her room quickly, grabbing her laptop and returning to the ledge to face his sadness; the light and sound of a sleepless city, awaking slowly from a long, hard hibernation.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” resting the quiet machine on her lap, trying not to twiddle her thumbs, “but we can try.”

When she boots up the laptop, a soothing hum ignites in her fingertips and rushes through her veins. Now this, _this_ she can do. She can feel his nervousness from over her shoulder, can see his fingers peeling the label away from the bottle out of the corner of her eye. “Relax,” she says softly, closing her eyes, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She’s not sure how much time passes, but at some point, in the midst of all the chatter, she hears it—a song that sounds familiar even though she is certain she’s never heard it before. “Do you hear it?”

He doesn’t seem to, not at first, not until she increases the volume on the laptop and slides it carefully onto his lap. “Take as long as you want,” pressing a kiss to his temple before standing and returning to her room, “I’ll be right here.”

It’s hard for her not to let her mind wander, to consider the particulars of a conversation that he’s been waiting to have for _years_ , a voice and a face that he’s been tortured by everytime he closes his eyes. She had never even really considered looking for her own parents. What would she even say to them? _Thanks for the childhood trauma, I have multiple lifetimes worth of debilitating baggage and it’s all thanks to you._ And what would they do, anyway? Apologize? Fat lot of good that would do.

When he comes back inside she’s petting the soft edge of her succulent, somehow still flourishing regardless of her complete lack of knowledge as to how to properly care for the thing. His eyes are red and wet, and he tries to smile when he sees her obviously worried expression, only it crumbles as soon as she touches him, her hands coming up to frame his face with a gentleness she had not been sure she possessed. “Killian—”

“I’m quite alright, Emma. Thank you.”

It hurts to call the look in his eyes “love,” but she doesn’t know how else to describe the way he admires her with words of gratitude on his lips. It doesn’t matter what it is he’s thanking her for, whether it be the opportunity to speak with his mother one last time, her physical presence, or something else, it seems to encompass all of these things and more. The weight of this realization leaves her grasping for how to react, and in a moment of panic and a heavy, painfully beating heart, she presses her lips to his; aligns their bodies so firmly and precisely together that any suggestion of space between the two of them ceases to exist.

“Real enough for you?”

“Yes,” he rasps hotly against her lips, and the shiver she feels traveling down her spine and between her legs allows the terrifying rush of unwanted thoughts skittering elsewhere. “You are the _realest_ thing I have ever known.”  

✳︎

The sun shines bright and disarming the following morning. Having left her curtains open the night before, he is able to admire the sight of her eyelashes dusting atop her cheeks in the cleansing light of a new day. The world feels different. The only other time he can recall feeling this way was waking up the morning his mother had passed, sensing that something fundamental had changed, that his life would be forced to take a direction he had not expected. For the first time in years, he can picture the farmhouse in his head as if it were a photograph. Can smell the aged wood, the cooling stove, the chamomile tea brewing on the counter. _Time to go home_ , he thinks suddenly, staring at Emma as she twitches mildly in her sleep.

The way the blankets have come to rest beneath her breasts, her hair splayed over the pillow, she looks not unlike some unnamed renaissance painting one might see hanging in a museum somewhere. Her skin smooth, soft, and warm, he can’t resist the temptation to run his fingers gently over her ribcage, observing the slight, sloping arcs of her.

“Hey,” she says quietly, stretching her arms above her head. “What are you thinking about?”

In the days, weeks, and months following this morning, he will freeze this moment in his head. The way she had looked at him, with a contented yet desirous look that had almost convinced him to put off the conversation for a few hours. Oh, how he wished he had. Perhaps, if he had waited just a bit longer, if he had considered how she might respond with greater care—if he hadn’t been quite so excited by the change in the wind.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said with a smile on his face, “that it might be time for me to return home.”

Hell, if he had even relayed the thought in a way that implied his wish for her to come _with him_. That he was by no means planning to abandon _her_ , that in all of his visions of the future, _of course_ she played a starring role. But in his haste to share the news, to embark upon this journey that he had awoken to find simmering beneath the surface, he had failed to consider the fragility of her heart. A vulnerability she often hid well, but to his eyes, not well enough.

“Oh,” responding with a deceptive pleasantness, leaving his side quicker than he would have liked. “That’s uh, that’s great, Killian.”

“I think you’ll like it,” he continued, oblivious to her discomfort, a point which he would absolutely kick himself for later. “Might take a bit to get the Internet hooked up, but—”

“Wait, did I miss something?”

For someone with so remarkable a memory, all of the words they throw back and forth seem to grow a bit fuzzy after that. Their voices grow louder and crueler than he can stand; they twist and turn inside the labyrinth of his mind with all the gentleness of a machete hacking through a jungle—sharp, incomprehensible things that end in one undeniable fact: he leaves, she stays.

✳︎

A year passes. In the city, a year passes in rides on the subway. It passes in television shows and which bars you’ve decided to stop going to. Some new diet you’ve decided to try in lieu of really examining oneself as a person. On the farm, it passes in sunsets—in which vegetables take root at what time, and will they make it? _Maybe_ , and he can hear his mother’s voice, _if it’s their time_. It passes in whether or not Chammy has decided if she’ll be sleeping at the end of his bed. Can he feel her small, humming warmth atop his feet? Winter. Has he lost track of her hungry chirps each morning? Spring.

The months without Emma Swan are dimmer than he can stand. Desaturated, cornerless days of trying not to think about the jagged edges of her hair. Or the way she smelled, or how she had curled around him in sleep with a fierce, desperate grip. _Please, stay._ Winter is hard, since winter was when it had all began. With beanies and boots, and pale hands reaching for his. He will wonder, occasionally, if she’s managed to keep the plant he had given her alive without his reminding her to water it. And then, inevitably, his mind will wander to the shape of her face, or the color of her eyes—and the months apart feel more like years. He writes a lot of e-mails that he never gets around to sending. Some of them biting and cruel; others quite obviously lovelorn. Pathetic.

Sometimes, when he stands in his cold kitchen waiting for the fire to take the early morning chill out of the place, he imagines his mother’s voice in the silence. _Come now, Killian,_ she remarks playfully, _it’s not all bad is it?_ And then the sun will shine through the bare trees, and Chammy will scratch at the door, and he’ll take a breath. No, not _all_ bad. The only time he hears the honk of a car horn is when he drives into town for supplies. His lungs never feel as if they were in danger of collapsing (unless he’s thinking about Emma Swan, in which case, he finds himself yearning for the gritty, polluted haze of the city); and his feet feel rooted to the earth.

Life goes on—it grows.

✳︎

Emma Swan returns to him in midsummer. All solid flesh and sinew, with striking green eyes that appear almost golden in the pre-evening sunlight. She walks towards him in the same boots she had worn the morning they met, only with more tape wrapped around the toes. She walks with a lightness that he had only managed to catch a glimpse of—that day at the lake, when her blessed history had come rushing through her lips like a waterfall after too much rain.

It feels like another year has passed when she comes to a stop in front of him, her bag falling heavily off of her shoulder. The both of them staring at the ground as if it will save them, her bag and his feet, toes wiggling in the dirt.

“Your hair,” he says finally, admiring the sight of the freckles that have begun to bloom across her cheeks. “I like it.”

Grown past her shoulders in the months following his departure in long, soft waves that he has often dreamed of running his fingers through. Only he’s not dreaming now, and has grown sick with waiting. “Thanks,” she begins to say, only he finds himself overcome with the sound of her voice, and before she can complete her thought he has snuck a hand against the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his—all of those beautiful words waiting in the lovely depths of her soul, and he is ecstatic at the prospect of being able to hear each and every one.

Eventually, he leads her by the hand towards his front porch, newly sanded and finished, replete with antique rockers and potted plants lining the steps. He thinks it might be polite to offer her a drink, to ask her about her trip, but he’s finding it difficult to do anything other than stare at their joined hands—his browned with the sun and the dirt, her’s just as pale as he remembers, only her polish has turned a friendly blue as opposed to the chipped black he can recall with such fondness.

“Lily says ‘Hi,’” she says, her voice thick with emotion.

“I have a hard time believing that.” His heart thumps at the brief, shy smile she sends his way, her knee moving up and down with a familiar degree of anxiety that he knows he still _loves_ —even still, he knows, and although there are few things he knows, this he can say with certainty, he _loves_ her. He places a hand on her knee and she stills, her eyes roaming over his features with a gaze so hungry he finds himself struggling to breathe.

“I’ve missed you,” she says softly, and he can practically feel her nerves buzzing around them as if they were sitting beneath a hornet’s nest, “I thought that, maybe, everything would just go back to the way it was, like always, but—”

Her hair lifts in a warm breeze that seems to engulf them in an almost eerie, magical quiet, and while he wants nothing more than to ease her fears, to reassure her that no matter what she says, he will never let her go again, he lets her speak her piece, her eyes meeting his once more. “I didn’t want it to. I don’t want things to go back to the way they were before you.”

When their foreheads meet, he thinks he might catch a flash of their future. In the next few minutes, they might move inside to find a bright, well-ventilated kitchen that he has renovated with his own two hands. She might meet Chammy with a pleased hum, cradling his old companion in her strong, steady arms. Would she then relax in the garden with him? Snapping pictures of his bare, freckled back with her phone, laughing and sending them to Lily even though she held little affection for such things. Installing wires and cables and slipping them beneath the persian rugs in the living room in order to maintain the _illusion_ that she has fully embraced the country life.

Holding one another tightly each night, perhaps recalling the loneliness, the anger they had once felt and marveling at the seeming improbability of finding each other in such a vast, concrete sea. But for now he makes her tea. He tucks some strands of that new, thick hair behind one ear as they listen to the final, evening chorus of the birds, the water boiling in the kettle. “I am so very happy to see you,” he admits with a smile, relishing in the sight of her flushed, joyful face, “Emma Swan.”


End file.
